Best SEO tools
A note on what is absent: Ahrefs and Semrush are tracked daily but publish their prices in ways our extraction does not yet hold as a named ladder, so they are excluded rather than guessed. Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on the date beside it. The ordering is cheapest entry price first — a basis you can check rather than a ranking you have to trust.
What “best” means on this page
“Best” is not a mood — it is whichever axis you actually care about, measured. Our record can say which tool is cheapest to start, whose free plan is real, who bills local currency and whose prices just moved; it cannot say which tool fits your work, which is what the full comparisons are for. Cheapest never means best — it means cheapest. Each verdict below names its axis, and every tool links to its own site so you can check us against the source. No vendor paid for any position.
Entry at $30.5/mo — the lowest published paid plan in this set. Cheap is a fact, not a verdict; the profile below says what you get for it.
site ↗pricing ↗A plan priced at zero on the vendor’s own page — trials not counted. What each one caps differs; the profiles say.
Showed us different money in different countries on the same day — measured, not assumed. The profiles carry the figures.
A change only counts once a second clean read agrees. The change log →
Tool by tool
Mangoolssite ↗pricing ↗
A group of five lightweight SEO tools sold together, aimed at freelancers and small teams who find the big suites overbuilt. Paid plans start at $30.5/mo (Mangools Basic); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $70.5/mo (Mangools Agency). It bills by country — entry $61/mo to a UK reader and €61/mo in the eurozone, from our same-day reads.
SpyFusite ↗pricing ↗
A competitor research tool that shows the keywords and ads rivals have bought and ranked for, historically. Paid plans start at $39/mo (Basic); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $249/mo (DATA). We read the same $39/mo in every market we check, so this vendor does not price by country.
SE Rankingsite ↗pricing ↗
An SEO platform covering rank tracking, audits and competitor research, popular with agencies for its white-label reporting. Paid plans start at $45/mo (API); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $89/mo (AI Search). It bills by country — entry £35/mo to a UK reader and €39/mo in the eurozone, from our same-day reads.
Mozsite ↗pricing ↗
An SEO toolset covering keyword research, link data and site audits, and the origin of the Domain Authority metric. Paid plans start at $99/mo (Standard); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 3 paid tiers, topping out at $299/mo (Large). We read the same $99/mo in every market we check, so this vendor does not price by country. Its published prices moved on 2026-09-10 — the change log holds the rows.
Ahrefssite ↗pricing ↗
An SEO toolset built on its own web crawler — backlinks, keywords, rank tracking and site audits. Paid plans start at $129/mo (Lite); no free plan is published. The ladder we hold runs 4 paid tiers, topping out at $1499/mo (Enterprise).
Semrushsite ↗pricing ↗
A broad SEO and digital marketing suite covering keywords, competitor research, ads and content. Paid plans start at $139.95/mo (SEO); a free plan exists. The ladder we hold runs 4 paid tiers, topping out at $549/mo (Advanced). It bills by country — entry £113.4/mo to a UK reader and €134.21/mo in the eurozone, from our same-day reads.
Side by side
| Tool | Paid from | Free plan | Currency | Read | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mangools | $30.5/mo | — | USD | 2026-10-13 | page |
| SpyFu | $39/mo | — | USD | 2026-10-13 | page |
| SE Ranking | $45/mo | — | USD | 2026-10-13 | page |
| Moz | $99/mo | — | USD | 2026-10-13 | page |
| Ahrefs | $129/mo | — | USD | 2026-08-27 | page |
| Semrush | $139.95/mo | Yes | USD | 2026-10-13 | page |
How to choose in this category
- Entry prices are high and annual billing is where the discounts live.
- Tiers are data limits — keyword counts, tracked sites, report caps — more than features.
- Prices in this category move; check the change log before quoting one.
Questions the record can answer
How much do SEO tools cost?
Between $30.5/mo and $139.95/mo. The lowest entry price we hold for any of the 6 SEO tools we track is Mangools, at $30.5/mo; the highest is Semrush, at $139.95/mo. Both are the vendor's own published list price, read on 2026-10-13. Cheapest is not best; it is cheapest, and it is the one axis a price record can settle on its own.
Which SEO tools publish a plan priced at zero?
1 of the 6 we track: Semrush. A free trial is not counted here: a trial is a deadline, not a price.
Do SEO tools charge in my own currency?
Some do. We read every pricing page from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany on the same day, and 4 of the 6 SEO tools we track showed us a different currency in at least two of those three markets: Mangools, SE Ranking, Ahrefs and Semrush. The rest billed the same money to all three.
Have any SEO tools changed their prices recently?
One confirmed change in this category: Moz, on 2026-09-10. A change is confirmed only when the vendor's own page showed us one set of figures and then another; the old reading stays in the record rather than being overwritten.
How many SEO tools does Wicketry track?
9 in this category, last read on 2026-10-13. 6 of them publish a plan ladder we can put in the table; we also track Serpstat, Surfer SEO and Ubersuggest, but hold no named ladder for them in US dollars yet, so they are absent rather than converted or guessed.